The Palm Beach and Southwest Florida News Guild have reached a tentative agreement for their first collective bargaining agreement with Gannett after nearly four years of negotiations. The agreements will benefit workers at The Palm Beach Post, The Palm Beach Daily News, The News-Press and The Naples Daily News.
Covering two years, the tentative contract includes numerous improvements for the company’s journalists, including guaranteed raises for every member in each newsroom. The agreements also freeze healthcare premiums and lock in existing 401(k) matches for members at a time when healthcare costs are skyrocketing and Gannett has diminished its 401(k) match for non-union employees.
The deal also includes enhanced protections against adoption of artificial intelligence and layoff protections for long term employees.
“This deal is an important first step towards protecting local journalism by making our newsrooms better, more equitable places to work,” Palm Beach News Guild co-chair Kati Kokal said. “In a world with runaway inflation and rapidly changing technology, we’re proud to have locked in so many protections for our members through union organizing and bargaining.”
Members of the guilds, which together represent around 60 journalists, must still ratify the contract.
Layoff protections for senior employees and established salary minimums were top issues for the news guilds in Florida. Many members had not seen raises in several years — and the starting salaries offered by Gannett were still far below a liveable wage in the West Palm Beach, Fort Myers and Naples metro areas.
“This contract begins the process of achieving one of our primary objectives: substantially raising wages for journalists in what’s become one of the most expensive areas of the country to live,” Southwest Florida News Guild co-chair Dan DeLuca said. “We are committed to continuing to address this priority both during the term of this contract and beyond.”
This contract takes significant steps toward righting those wrongs by establishing an inverse seniority order in the case of layoffs by the company and instituting salary minimums for new employees, those with five years of employment with the company and those with ten years of employment.
Other achievements in the contract include guaranteed raises in the second year of the contract, freezing the current paid time off structure so no member loses days of PTO this year, 10 weeks paid parental leave, a mileage reimbursement rate that follows the IRS rate, and just cause protections for the disciplinary process.
Journalists in Palm Beach unionized in February 2020 with 85% support of the newsroom. All 55 staffers who voted in the certification election voted in favor of the union.
Southwest Florida journalists unionized in June 2020 with 86% in favor.
The Palm Beach and Southwest Florida News Guilds are part of the Communications Workers of America Local 3108 and The NewsGuild-CWA.